Until, and After
by trufflemores
Summary: 4.01 AU. Sometimes Barry has bad days and Iris and he stumble, but it's not the end of everything. A continuation of my mini-series where Barry never recovers, with its predecessors "Archipelago," "From Red to Blue," and "To Purple, With Love."


9:47 PM.

"I'm not – I'm not a branch."

Iris shuts the door to their apartments and frowns, turning slowly to face Barry. He's sitting on the floor watching McSnurtle plod across it. Hands in his hair, he tells the turtle, "Fast, brash, lash, crash –" With increasing agitation, he clenches his hands around his head and bows it. "I'm not – I'm not –" He sobs, hunching his shoulders farther inward protectively.

"Honey," Iris begins, venturing closer, but he doesn't look up, deep, anguished sobs torn from his chest. "Barry, Barry, it's okay." She reaches out and ghosts a hand over his shoulder, asking, "Can I touch you?"

"Tap, clap, trap, slap—" he shakes his head almost violently, tearing at his hair. Cautiously, Iris rests a hand on his wrist. She can feel the tension in his lightning, a flavor of tortured rage. Before she can respond to it, he Flashes, reappearing in a corner at the opposite side of the room, curled up in a tight ball. "I'm not a twig," he begs, looking up at her, face flushed, eyes glassy and hurting. "I – I –" Tapping his chest emphatically with a fist, he asserts, "I'm –" He presses his fist to his mouth, another terrible sob driving a nail into the wall.

It's the image of Barry folded inward in protective agony that finally tips recognition.

 _I'm not broken._

She repeats it softly aloud, and he finally looks up at her, really looks at her.

She doesn't like what she sees.

The resignation in his voice is paralyzing when he rasps, "I have to go." He stands and she mirrors him, heart pounding. "This is – this is my penance. This is my redemption." But despite the optimism of his words, there is no hopefulness in his eyes, no sense of a great adventure beyond. She takes a step towards him. "You need to keep living your life," he tells her sincerely, stepping back. Tears trickle down her own face as she takes another step towards him and he falls back again, insisting thickly, "Keep growing. Keep loving. Keep running."

His back hits the wall, and for a moment she thinks he will run. For one moment, she sees three months evaporate, and the darkness closing in like the rain outside the city, pushing against them, unseen but felt. "You don't have to run," she tells him, and he stares at her. She approaches, and his chest stops moving. "You don't have to leave. You don't have to _go_ , Barry." She closes the distance between them and says softly, "Barry, you're home. You came home to me."

She reaches for his hand, slowly, expecting him to disappear, to vanish like the fever dream this must all be, but her fingers close around his cold hand instead. He exhales shakily, and she says firmly, "I don't need more." When his brow furrows, tears in his eyes, she explains, "I don't need _more_ , Barry. I didn't say yes," she squeezes his hand, ring warmer than his skin, "because I thought you would give me a perfect life." She huffs in soft amusement at the thought, at the despairing expectation of living for the unattainable. "I said _yes_ because I wanted a life with you." She reaches up and brushes away a tear that breaks free. "I want a life with you," she repeats.

He says slowly, painfully, "I want – you – to – be happy."

"Bar," she says, reaching up with to frame his face. "I _am_ happy." The tears keep coming. She insists, "I'm happy with you."

"Bereft," he explains softly. Before she can puzzle that out, he rambles on a few paces, chanting, "Deft, set, left, _left_." He swallows and looks away. "All that's left," he parrots suddenly. Her heart splinters, a lump forming in her throat. "All that's left," he repeats, echoing a sentiment from a lifetime ago. And then he slips from her hold and vanishes in a Flash of yellow light.

She doesn't need to turn to know he's gone, her breath catching in her chest, fear and anguish warring for immediacy. She staggers a step back from the wall, and reaches without hope for her phone, knowing that he's gone. He's gone. He's gone.

At last, in desperation, in despair, she texts Cisco. _SOS_.

A long minute passes before a portal appears in the space nearby. Iris gasps when Cisco steps out of it, already asking questions she can't answer, a single phrase catching and holding her attention absolutely: _Where's Barry, where's Barry?_

It echoes in her head with a tangible grief that wants to subsume her, consume her, but she forces herself to say, "He ran away."

. o .

12:02 AM.

The evening passes in a blur.

She doesn't notice the transition from apartment to the brilliant chrome Cortex at STAR Labs, only idly hoping that Cisco put McSnurtle away. She picks up on Caitlin and Wally and Dad, but she doesn't acknowledge them. She can hear people talking, even responds to them when they address her, but her gaze is fixed on the screens full of noise, and the screens full of silence, and the screens indicating only one word: _lost_.

From the end of a long tunnel, Cisco assures, "We'll find him."

Iris takes a seat in a chair, puts her head in her hands, and lets a wave of silence drag the noise back to sea.

. o .

3:48 AM.

The phone rings. Cisco, still up and running, puts it on speaker. "Oliver?"

"He's with me."

The room exhales. Cisco says, "On my way" and leaves the phone.

On the other end of the line, Oliver says simply, "He's unhurt."

Iris can read the hidden message. _But he's not okay._

. o .

4:12 AM.

There's a fierce protectiveness to the arm Cisco has wrapped under Barry's shoulders, his voice steady and affirmative as he says, "Good to have you back, buddy."

Iris stands near the central console, watching the two of them. Barry doesn't say a word, deliberately averting his gaze to the floor. Iris would read embarrassment in the gesture if the edges of his shoulders weren't so sharp. Instead the quiet registers differently: it comes across as _pain_.

It doesn't surprise her that Cisco's grip is so firm, even though Barry seems good on his feet. "Why don't we get something to eat?" Cisco suggests bracingly. Iris can tell without touching Barry's hands that they're still cold, that he's starting to run on fumes, physically and emotionally. "My place." He gives Barry the littlest of shakes, a talk-to-me-buddy kind of signal that only earns a soft grunt of approval.

Cisco waits a beat, retrieving his phone, but Barry walks over to a wall and stares at it for a long moment, and Iris can almost read the _I don't want to be here_ in his back. Walking over, Cisco puts a hand on his shoulder and they walk through a breach, disappearing.

Dad says, "Iris—" but she replies quietly, "Not tonight."

The team dissolves, leaving her alone in the Cortex, her-alone in this vast empty space she knows too well, and she thinks about what it would be like to walk in here again and know that Barry wasn't coming home again, Barry wasn't going to smile at her again, Barry wasn't going to hug her or kiss her again, Barry wasn't going to sleep in their bed again and _how long are you going to keep sleeping on the couch waiting for him?_

She told Cisco that she'd given up on Barry's return without saying the words, but she still couldn't bring herself to sleep in their bed. She left the candle burning.

And still, and still, and still in spite of everything, it burns.

However low, however soft, however yielding to the darkness – it burns.

Taking a deep breath, Iris gathers herself and walks home alone, cradling that tiny candle of hope close to her chest.

. o .

7:34 AM.

In silence, Iris brews coffee to quiet the anvil pounding behind her eyes.

When it's done, she wanders out onto the balcony in the brisk morning air and consigns each steaming breath to the snow. The blue light is soft on the city, but the city is sharp underneath it, a brambling tangle of straight lines and curved edges that draw her gaze in a slow, sweeping panorama. She thinks about all the days spent below, on the streets, out in the suburbs, far from the beating heart of this living and dying beast.

And she doesn't see his stars, but she does trace out arc of a redemption story that got tangled midway. Something happened, something sabotaged it, and instead of returning home triumphant, The Flash came back a stranger to his own city, to his own life. She thinks about him out there, wandering the streets without a map or any sense of direction, northern star replaced with the expectation of coherence, _don't-you-know, don't-you-know-the-full-story?_

She can understand the agony, the frustration of knowing enough to know home is right in front of him and yet so far away. Everything is wrong: the colors inverted, the memories broken into pieces, the language stripped from his soul.

It's amazing he can look at her and still see the Iris he loves.

It occurs to her, then, how mutually exhausting, how mutually difficult the endeavor must be. For there is something there, some profound desire to connect with her that stumbles and falls, that tries and tries again, that aches for a word, a single word to describe a feeling that will offer itself to no other description. Her Barry isn't gone – but he isn't the same, and it frustrates him, too. It tires him, too.

It makes him feel lonely, too.

She hears a whoosh nearby and considers what she wants to say for a long moment, facing the city, allowing the cold to seep steadily into their home. With a rallying breath, she turns to face him and finds him standing in the middle of the room, holding a single red rose. It's nearly bare, with just a handful of petals clinging to its stem. He stands barefoot in the same outfit they found him in, the one given to him at the CCPD after they picked him up nearly three hundred miles from home.

She can almost see it, then, that exact moment in time as she stood trembling at his side and he drew circles on the board, her own fear and anguish washing out the rest.

But when he finally looks up at her now, she realizes he was listening then.

He was _listening_.

 _I don't know what I would do if this is all that's left of you_.

Stepping forward, Iris sets her coffee mug aside. She doesn't say a word as she approaches him, mirroring him and his silence, trying to see the world through his eyes, those inquisitive eyes watching her, waiting for her. Trying to understand that he doesn't understand, that he may never fully understand the silent invisible everything between them, but he still aches so much he has to _try_.

They both have to.

When she's close enough, she reaches out and takes the stem of the rose, and he lets go.

She doesn't let it fall, and he takes another step forward, gently crushing it between them as he hugs her, his shaking like grief and relief tied together, there-is-no-word-for-it.

"I still love you," she whispers against his cheek as he clings to her back, never hurting her, promising to never let go. "I love all that's left, Barry."

She feels his tears against her shoulder and doesn't let him go, insisting softly, "I love you, I love you, I love you…"

. o .

Sometime-Later.

They tangle on the couch together, sometime-later, her legs between his and his breaths soft under her cheek. He has an arm wrapped around her back, just resting there, enjoying its presence, unquestioned and welcome. Sometimes he doesn't want to be touched, but sometimes he wants to be hugged, and kept close, and shown the simple truth that always pervades:

He still wants to be loved.

Closing her eyes, Iris presses a fist gently to his heart, his favorite phrase, _I-love-you_ , and silently promises him and the little flower on the table that she will still love him, until and after the last petal falls.


End file.
